The United Nations nuclear watchdog chief said on Friday United States intelligence allegations that Syria secretly built a nuclear reactor with North Korean help were serious and would be thoroughly investigated.
”The agency will treat this information with the seriousness it deserves and will investigate the veracity of the information,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
He confirmed Washington had handed over information which said that a Syrian installation destroyed by an Israeli air strike last September was not yet a completed atomic reactor.
”According to this information, the reactor was not yet operational and no nuclear material had been introduced into it,” he said in a statement.
But he said Syria would have been obliged under its non-proliferation safeguards agreement with the Vienna-based UN watchdog to inform it in advance of any planning and construction of a nuclear facility.
Still, he said he ”deplores the fact” that the United States had not turned the information over to the IAEA on the reactor, said to have been launched in 2001, in a ”timely manner to enable us to verify its veracity and establish the facts”.
”In light of the above, [I] view the unilateral use of force by Israel as undermining the due process of verification that is at the heart of the non-proliferation regime,” ElBaradei added.
Syria has denied involvement in such nuclear activities and has accused Washington of trying to discredit Damascus. – Reuters